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The Lord Bishop of St Albans
To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have to ensure farmers are supported and recompensed for their role in flood prevention.
The Lord Bishop of St Albans
My Lords, I am grateful to all Members of your Lordships’ House who have signed up for this topical debate, giving us a few minutes to explore the extraordinary challenges that flooding is causing for our farming community.
We had an extremely wet September, with dozens of flood warnings issued by the Environment Agency. Indeed, in my diocese in Bedfordshire, large areas flooded—fortunately not for long periods. In fact, England had 95% more rainfall than its September average, and 10 counties in England experienced their wettest September on record.
Floods and heavy rainfall can affect everyone, but the devastation they can cause to farmers is unique. When farmland is flooded and the ground saturated, it can be impossible to plant crops; harvests are poor and may be lost completely. So many of our farmers have not yet recovered from the intense flooding they faced last winter. Defra-commissioned research finds that winter floods cost farmers an average of £480 per hectare. That is a staggering loss.
The Government need urgently to roll out the expanded offer of the farming recovery fund, as businesses and livelihoods are under threat. The time pressures here are critical. The fund is designed to support farmers to restore their land to the condition it was in prior to flooding in order to secure food supply, which this Government have repeatedly assured us is a key priority. I note that the Defra Secretary of State, Steve Reed, has said that no confirmation on the rollout of the farming recovery fund can be given until the spending review is complete. I regret that it should be delayed for so long and stress that every week it is delayed, farmers and their businesses are suffering. Can the Minister confirm that the expanded offer will be launched as soon as possible following completion of the spending review?
The devastating impacts of flooding on farmers are clear, but what about the public goods they provide through their role in flood prevention, and the costs they bear to protect us from flooding? Rural landowners and farmers provide a critical service in the form of natural flood management when their lands flood, and they do this by storing water. Farmers need to be properly compensated for providing this public service—not just for the cost of restoring this land to use for food production but for the cost of lost income.
This is complicated, as illustrated by a specific example brought to my attention by a hill farmer in the Naddle valley just outside Keswick, an area that suffers from flooding. A flood management pilot, part funded by government and called the Resilient Glenderamackin project, is aimed at trying to tackle the risks to Keswick of increased flooding through natural flood management. This farmer is facing the challenge of trying to work out whether to join that flood management scheme. If he enters his bottom valley fields into the flood management scheme, he will no longer have suitable grazing or haymaking land. Fodder would need to be brought in, which raises concerns about availability, price and quality. It can be extremely challenging to put a price on this for a year, let alone longer term, which is a challenge both for the West Cumbria Rivers Trust, as it tries to set payment rates for farmers, and for the farmers themselves when it comes to making these decisions. I raise this example just to highlight the complexities of the issues. This is what people are actually facing: the day-by-day reality of how they are going to make their farms viable.
We need a long-term, mutually agreed strategy to allow farmers to plan and prepare for flood storage. We need to ensure that our farming businesses are able to thrive and that we can guarantee our food security. As many of us have noted, in recent global conflicts it has become even clearer just how urgent it is that we are able to produce the majority of the food that we need here in this country.
I welcome His Majesty’s Government’s new Floods Resilience Taskforce and Secretary of State Steve Reed’s pledge to speed up the construction of flood defences, drainage systems and natural flood schemes. However, I hope too that the department recognises the importance of maintaining existing assets and systems. Data from the Environment Agency shows that maintaining existing assets in good repair is more than twice as cost effective as building new defences to protect property from flooding. Yet in some places, existing flood defences are falling into disrepair as the Environment Agency’s revenue budget, which is used for asset maintenance, has not been increased in real terms for nearly 20 years and has suffered cuts of nearly a third since 2020. As is true in so many cases, the lack of a multiyear financial settlement is preventing long-term planning and investment.
We on these Benches appreciate the work of Ministers and civil servants in Defra on these issues. I know that Farming Minister Daniel Zeichner recently reassured the farming community that he is “fighting tooth and nail” on their behalf when it comes to the upcoming Budget. Secretary of State Steve Reed said this week that he is
“making the strongest case for that funding”—[Official Report, Commons, 8/10/24; col. 240.]
for the agricultural budget and various other schemes. We want to put our weight behind them, and I hope the Minister will pass this on and note our appreciation for all that Defra is working on.
I also want to highlight, as we so often do when we say that something is going well, that some measures in the SFI and Countryside Stewardship schemes work well for both flood management and farmers, although these need time to mature. Hedgerows along the contours of fells, for example, give farmers clear field boundaries and slow down water. They are good for wildlife and for carbon sequestration. We need to work together to try to find win-win solutions that work for all the parties involved in this significant area.
Farmers play a vital role in the flourishing of our country, producing the food we need, sustaining and protecting our environment and wildlife, and preventing flooding. They are an essential part of the solution to many of the challenges that we face. I ask that we keep that in mind in a world where there are lots of issues. I am acutely aware that the Treasury is always being asked for more money for everything we do, and that special pleas and special cases are being made.
We need to remember where the food on our tables comes from. Who is on the ground doing so much of the work to restore our natural habitats and move towards net zero and, of course, playing a central role in protecting our homes from flooding as extreme weather events become more common in the face of climate change? We need to give strong, practical long-term support to our farmers in the face of flooding. They are the bedrock of our nation.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
I congratulate the right reverend Prelate on securing this very important debate, which is very timely given the recent wet weather. I declare my interests in the register. In particular, I am a vice-president of the Association of Drainage Authorities, which encompasses the internal drainage boards.
As the right reverend Prelate said, farmers perform a huge public role producing food and delivering wholesome products domestically, battling the elements as they do so. They can and do face unfair competition from substandard imports and the inability to bid favourably for major contracts with prisons, schools, hospitals and others. However, farms are businesses, and they need to make a profit and have a sustainable business model.
Flood water is retained on farmland, which in turn protects businesses and properties downstream from flooding, yet often this service is neither recognised nor rewarded. Farmers are responsible for keeping the riverbanks on their land free from debris and maintaining the embankments, which act as a flood defence and are often in a state of disrepair. In addition, as members of internal drainage boards in low-lying areas, farmers provide the vital service of maintenance, dredging watercourses and performing flood prevention schemes.
The Environment Agency’s resources, as we know, are spread thinly and do not stretch to cover rural areas on the same basis as urban ones. The issue of maintenance and repair of pumping stations is hugely important as, where flood banks are breached in extreme floods or pumping stations fail, devastation follows for farmland and properties alike. Where farmland floods, thereby protecting other businesses and communities, it is only right that the farmer affected should be recognised for the provision of that public good on his or her land. I am sure that many farmers take a view that, if they were properly compensated for the provision which enables them to remain with a viable business, that would be an acceptable recognition for the service to the community they are providing.
Local authorities in rural areas also have a role to play but we know that their budgets are under great pressure. This is not helped where money for flood defences and prevention is not ring-fenced. Where regular maintenance does not take place, this makes farmland yet more vulnerable to floods. I believe that farmers and organisations such as golf clubs would be open to creating reservoirs on their land but are discouraged from doing so by the prescriptive provisions of the Reservoirs Act 1975. The Flood and Water Management Act 2010 modified that Act to reduce from 25,000 to 10,000 cubic metres the capacity at which a reservoir will be regulated. This should be revisited urgently. If it was reviewed, it would help more reservoirs to be created on farmland and other land, such as golf courses.
Sufficient investment must be made to maintain and manage our river systems. I have long argued that there should be a total budget for flood defence spending—totex—as opposed to conflicting and competing revenue and capital funding spend. This came to light most graphically when there was an enormous row during the flooding on the Somerset Levels some years ago, about whether the moving of a pump on to that land constituted revenue or capital spend. The farmers did not care what it was; they wanted the pump to be on the land to pump the water off the farmland, protecting it and communities downstream. Better use must be made of current budgets by rebalancing spending allocations from the current heavily weighted capital investment choice to a much more balanced approach, favouring revenue funding and the long term, to bring all flood risk assets and rivers back up to good condition.
Farmers have suffered significant challenges in recent years—Covid, the impact of hostilities in Ukraine, higher energy costs, and heavy losses of crops given the sheer scale of floods over the last 18 months. Floods this year have impacted on both arable and livestock farmers alike. As reported in the Yorkshire Post today, what makes the situation so grave and urgent, after weeks and months of flooding and saturated land, is that the impact on food prices is already being felt. The potential consequences for food security and self-sufficiency are significant, as highlighted by the right reverend Prelate. I therefore join his call for action. I press the Minister to confirm that the Government will go ahead with the expanded offer of the farming recovery fund, and to recognise what was always understood: that the public good that farmers perform with flood storage on their farmland will be recognised and receive compensation through the ELM scheme.
Will the Minister review the Reservoirs Act 1975, as amended by the 2010 Act and others, with a view to encouraging more reservoirs to be built on farmland and other areas, such as golf clubs? At present, she must recognise that the duties on landowners of smaller reservoirs are simply too onerous, with responsibilities for inspections and failure in this carrying criminal penalties and convictions for such offences. Finally, will the Minister look at amending the flood defence grant in aid to ensure that farmers and rural communities are treated on a more equal basis with urban areas and receive better protection from future floods?
Earl Russell (LD)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to speak in this debate. I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans for bringing it to us, and thank the others who are speaking. It is important that we fight to support and protect our farmers from the hardships they face. Between the impacts of Brexit, the implementation of delinked payments, wet weather, declining crop yields and inadequate compensation schemes, our farmers face a perfect storm that is sending many to the wall. The collective impacts are heartbreaking: the loss of family farms to bankruptcy, increased rates of suicide, and an overall decrease in crop yields due to the ever-present wet weather.
No farmers, no food: farming contributes £120 billion to the UK economy and is responsible for 4 million jobs, and our farmers provide 64% of the food we eat. Our farmers produce the food we need to survive. We all ate lunch today thanks to the work of our farmers. Farmers are our champions in the fight against climate change. Equally, the impacts of climate change hit them hardest and first. Farmers are the backbone of our food security—the protection of our land and soils. They are key partners in the work that must be done to protect the natural environment.
This September has been one of the wettest on record. Something is wrong when all we do is break climate records day after day. The UK is getting warmer and wetter as the impacts of climate change and climate breakdown are increasingly felt. The luxury of talking about possible future extreme weather events and their possible impacts is over. They are here now and only set to get worse.
For every rise of 1 degree Celsius in the atmospheric temperature, the atmosphere can hold up to 7% more moisture. Increasing heat brings increasing evaporation, which means that we will experience more precipitation, extreme rain events and flash flooding. Storms such as Babet, Ciarán and Henk have caused considerable damage to our agricultural land. Some of our farmers have had their land continuously underwater since October last year.
Either farmers have not been able to plant crops at all or the crops that they have planted have been impacted by waterlogged soils. Crop yields are down as a result. Wheat is down 15%, oilseed rape is down 28% and winter barley is down 22%. These are the real impacts that climate change is having today on our food security and farmers’ bottom lines. In 2023, the income from farming decreased by 19% as a result of flooding. It is against this background that we need to talk about the role of farming in our flood defences. Society needs farmers’ help in the fight against flooding and government needs to be clear that this means sacrificing their land, and their livelihoods, so their land is used to delay or hold water so that it is then released slowly and does not cause extreme damage to our homes and critical infrastructure. All this has an opportunity cost to farmers and we must compensate them fairly and quickly for this public service.
The announcement by the last Government of the flood recovery framework and the farming recovery fund were both welcomed. The flood recovery framework was poorly designed. Farmers struggled to get the information necessary to make applications. The requirements for 50 or more properties to be flooded were inappropriate for a farming fund. The local authority verification processes were also slow. The farming recovery fund still requires 50 properties to be flooded, but I welcome the fact that the qualifying measure of being 150 metres from a river has been removed. However, these systems are still not really fit for purpose and payments are still being delayed, which is causing real hardship. We really need a clearer and more flexible payments system that has the right criteria and is efficient in making the payments necessary. Above this, we need long-term stable support mechanisms so that farmers can prepare and plan longer-term changes and recover from traumatic weather-related events.
Farmers are only one small part of the food resilience framework. I welcome the Floods Resilience Taskforce that has been set up, but the Climate Change Committee has been clear that government must do more work on our resilience to plan for and invest in our flood defences. Government must properly fund the Environment Agency and other bodies. The Environment Agency has a £34 million deficit in its maintenance budget. Government must ensure that capital funding is in place for flood defences, to ensure that basic maintenance is conducted on drainage and flood defence systems. My view is that we need to do much more work with nature-based solutions that delay and hold water and release it slowly. These systems are good for people and the planet.
To conclude, there are rumours in the press that Labour may be planning to cut funding support for flooded farmers and that the budget decisions are also delaying reforms that are required to the application criteria. A Defra source said that decisions about how much money could be paid to farmers for the floods were being held up because of the spending review, and that cuts were on the table. We have already seen threats to cut £100 million a year from the nature-friendly farming budget.
I respect the Minister and I suspect she is not able to comment on the Budget, but my speech here today is leading to one appeal, and I suspect she can guess what it is. Now is the time to find solutions that work in practice, pay out on time, are adaptable to individual farmers’ needs and balance the competing objectives of flood prevention and food security. The window for finding solutions to the flooding problem is closing. Let us get these solutions right and let us get them in place now. The longer we leave this, the worse it will get and we will be overwhelmed with dealing with everyday levels of chaos, without having the necessary robust, basic systems in place that we need to weather the storms ahead. I call on the Minister to protect budgets and fight for a fair deal for our farmers and for holistic solutions to the ever-growing flooding risks.
The Earl of Devon (CB)
My Lords, my thanks go to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans for calling this debate—he is an excellent servant of the rural countryside. Inspired by the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, yesterday, I will seek to extemporise today, so I hope noble Lords will excuse me if I am not as fluid as the title of our debate. I hope not to get lost, however, as I will take noble Lords around my own experience of farming, hopefully to illustrate some of the issues that are raised by this topic.
I live at a place called Powderham. It is a medieval settlement, “the village on the marsh”, and we are therefore very used to issues of flooding. During my tenure, we have dealt with many such issues. We are based on the junction of the River Exe estuary and the River Kenn, and one of the tributaries of the Kenn is called the Slittercombe, which runs through the village of Kenton. This time last year, on a Sunday, we suffered the most dramatic rainfall ever experienced and a flood surge of some four to five feet rushed through the village of Kenton, flooding about 20 houses and the village primary school, which sits in a building that has been there for over 400 years. The primary school will never return to that building. It is currently resident in the Powderham Castle estate office and hopefully will have its own home soon on some playing fields up the hill and away from this danger.
This is a tragedy. The landscape above the village of Kenton holds the Slittercombe. That watershed is only about three miles long. Powderham farms a considerable amount of that watershed and all of the valley bottom is grassed. The steep banks alongside the valley bottom are subject to high-level stewardship and are managed under the EJ5 regime, where you have grass on the steep hills to prevent erosion and flood issues. Despite this, we had this most dramatic incident, and I do not think that anything we could have done on the farmland could have prevented it. It really is a desperate issue for the school.
The upper reaches of that valley, however, are the Haldon forest, which is of course inundated with deer—our nation is inundated with deer. The deer eat all the understory, so there is nothing on the ground in the woodlands and nothing to soak up the water that falls in the woods. In the higher ground on the valley, there is a considerable amount of farming for energy. That is maize growing, which is possibly the worst thing to be doing on a steep hillside. The land that is not growing maize tends to be growing horticultural vegetables—which, again, is a terrible thing to do on a steep hillside. But those farmers are not fortunate, like the Powderham estate, to be able to get a countryside stewardship scheme and are therefore desperate for the profits necessary, so they farm in that way.
Coming down the valley, we get to the River Kenn, which has long been a major tributary into the Exe. It is a managed landscape that has been canalised and managed for watercourses over many centuries. Of course, many of those watercourses are now failing and getting old and flooding is beginning to appear, so the fertile land within the valley is getting more and more boggy. There is an ongoing land management discussion among neighbouring farmers up the Kenn valley, seeking to find how to manage the land in a contiguous sense to better improve the outcomes. Of course, the only thing that the farmers have been able to agree on is carbon markets, because issues such as flood prevention and biodiversity are so complicated. I think that, as farmers begin to seek to work together, we really need to provide them with options that are not just the sale of carbon credits, which is the only marketplace that seems to be functioning at the moment.
As you go further down the valley, you reach the Powderham and Exminster marshes. This is an area of land that anyone who has taken the train down to Cornwall will be familiar with, because it is where the Great Western Railway first hits the water of the River Exe estuary. There is a large embankment that runs up from Powderham church to the Turf locks that is currently almost inundated. Both Network Rail and the Environment Agency are taking desperate measures to try to prevent the entirety of the Exminster marshes flooding. Among the difficulties we are seeing there is that animals—mammals—are undermining the banks and obviously, with climate change and sea level rise, those Powderham banks will not be fit for purpose. The Environment Agency, as we have already heard, does not really have the budget to do the work necessary to restore those banks and it is a terrible challenge.
The other threat that is coming is the beaver. The River Otter is obviously ground zero for the release of beavers, and if you get beavers burrowing into the Powderham banks and blocking all the drainage across the Exminster marshes, I dread to think what will happen to that very productive farmland that is the source of famously early Devon spring lamb and many different heritage productions. How we manage beavers following their release into the wild is an important issue that I hope the Minister will consider.
Then there is the broader Exe estuary. We have a project under way with Natural England, the National Trust, the Environment Agency and others to work out how to manage the whole lower Exe, which is silting up remarkably. The river is becoming almost impassable in some respects. The Exe, as I mentioned yesterday in our debate about water companies, used to be “the river of fish” in Roman times. We no longer see any fish, and that is largely due to run-off. As I say, the river is silting up due to run-off and management of the land. It is also the essential flood defence for Exeter. The city is growing rapidly and the management of the river is essential for the appropriate expansion of that city.
To follow up on a matter that the Minister and I debated yesterday, it is essential that we work out a way for the water companies to work really closely with the farming community to enable our urban centres to expand, survive and have healthy, fresh water. I pray in aid the south-west peatland project I mentioned yesterday and this ability of the water companies, as we review the water industry, to work closely with agriculture.
The Earl of Caithness (Con)
My Lords, as we have just experienced the wettest 18 months since records began in 1836, we are all grateful to the right reverend Prelate for raising this matter and giving us the opportunity to debate flooding and farming. Agricultural land in England is increasingly at risk of severe flooding, as the noble Earl, Lord Devon, just told us from personal experience. Currently, 74% of our total flood plain area is agricultural land, including 60% of our best and most versatile land. Last winter, the number of flood warnings on England’s best farmland hit a record high of over 1,000, exceeding the previous record by one-fifth.
Climate change is a significant driver of flooding. It is also responsible for increased and prolonged droughts. It is expected to make UK summers drier and hotter, and winters wetter and warmer. The hottest decade on record concluded in 2023, yet our weather is 12% wetter than the 1961 to 1990 average. So, although flooding is an important subject, we must be aware how interlinked the environment is and be conscious that, in proposing a solution for one thing, we do not adversely affect other problem areas. Currently, it is easy to forget that the south and east of England, where much of the water-intensive horticultural industry is located, is under most pressure from drought. It is predicted that we will use 5 billion more litres of water a day in 25 years’ time than now. Can the Minister confirm that the Floods Resilience Taskforce will also consider droughts, which are more damaging environmentally?
Both flooding and drought represent huge risks for English farmland and are likely to become more regular and severe, increasing the pressure on agricultural land. Both are part of the bigger problem of providing a sustainable drainage and water resources management system in this country. The Government, through ELMS, are supporting farmers, but the Minister will not be surprised that I recommend that more urgent attention should be given to soil, and in particular soil organic matter, which can be part of a solution to both problems. A 1% increase in soil organic matter per hectare adds 200 tonnes of water storage per hectare on average, but of course this will vary by soil type. This is because organic matter can hold 10 to 20 times its weight in water. This also increases a soil’s resilience to drought by allowing it to hold more water. The Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust’s Allerton Project has estimated that the around 18,000 cubic metres of water storage provided by 27 leaky dams located in optimal locations across 1,100 hectares could equally be achieved by increasing soil organic matter by just 1% across only 80 hectares.
Although arable land presents the greatest capacity for improvement, the value of grassland to flood risk mitigation, carbon sequestration, nutrient cycling and biodiversity should not be overlooked. Grass leys, especially deep-rooted cultivars, introduced into arable rotations can improve soil quality and therefore have the same benefits. They do not need to be grazed, given the associated costs of having livestock on a holding if it is not already present. Indeed, research has suggested there are greater benefits from an ungrazed simple grass and clover ley. Permanent pasture has a higher organic matter content than arable land, which could be optimised in some locations through the adoption of an agroforestry system based on about 80 trees per hectare. It should be noted how important it is to get the stocking rates at the right level, as they are key to avoiding compaction and minimising soil organic matter loss. Research has also suggested that mixed grazing with cattle and sheep can be more beneficial than cattle or sheep alone. Mixed grazing improves sward quality due to diversity of height and species.
If the Government want farmers to help solve drought and flooding problems, the solutions not only need to be balanced with their possible consequences for food production but must pay farmers for storing water on their land, as it is a public good. Furthermore, if policy requires changes in farming practices, it will involve a learning process and planning. The costs and challenges of transitioning to new methods of farming should not be overlooked. If support is insufficient to encourage adoption then farmers will consider alternative ways to survive, such as intensifying production or, as the noble Earl, Lord Devon, said, growing the wrong crops on the wrong land. In most cases, that will result in poor outcomes for the environment.
Given the critical role of finance in funding solutions, can the Minister confirm whether her department will return unspent money to the Treasury? I asked her this previously and got no reply. Does it intend to restore to real-terms levels, and preferably increase, the nature-friendly farming budget? I join others in asking what has happened to the expanded farming recovery fund announced by the Conservative Government. This was supposed to deliver support payments of up to £25,000 to help farmers recover from flooding earlier this year. Who is eligible? When can farmers expect a payment? Dragging their heels, as the Government are on this, does not give farmers any confidence that they have any thought for them or care about them.
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)
My Lords, I congratulate the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans on securing this extremely important debate and on his excellent and informative introduction to the subject, on which he has become something of an expert. I also congratulate the noble Earl, Lord Devon, on his excellent and informative speech. All speakers have spoken in depth about the effects of climate change on the lives of farmers. I am grateful to the NFU, the CLA and the House of Lords Library for their briefings on this subject, which affects many rural and farming communities.
Between October 2022 and March 2024, according to the NFU, the country experienced torrential rain, the most since records started in 1836. Storms Babet, Ciarán and Henk left many farms underwater between October 2023 and April 2024. Farmers were unable to plant crops or graze their stock. The Government’s response was to announce the flood recovery framework in May. This was welcomed, but information was difficult to find on who would be eligible and how to apply, and it had a short application timeframe. Many farmers missed the closing deadline or were turned away because their local authority was not aware of the scheme. As we approach autumn and another season of poor weather, can the Minister reassure us that this will not happen again and that there will be better communication in future?
One of the reasons the flood recovery framework was underused was that many believed that the farming recovery fund was only one option. This fund had grants of up to £25,000 towards repair and reinstatement costs for farmers who had suffered exceptional flooding. The noble Earl, Lord Caithness, has referred to this. This scheme now needs urgent expansion. The fund was also for exceptional flooding, but there are areas of the country where devastating flooding is not exceptional but the norm. These farmers are often part of a scheme whereby their land is offered up regularly for flooding, so that towns and villages are protected. The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, also raised this issue.
Such is the case on the Somerset Levels, where a system of regular flooding of certain moors in rotation occurs to protect the town of Bridgwater and the surrounding villages. The IDBs are a key element for the success of these schemes. On a fine day during the winter, the Somerset Levels can look picturesque, with the whole area underwater and trees loftily rising above the flood-water, with ducks, swans and other fowl floating serenely along, but this does not put bread and butter on the farmers’ tables, nor does it enable the farmer to plant crops for the next season or feed their cattle, or allow them to put their cattle or sheep out to graze.
Flood Re recompenses those householders who live in areas prone to severe flooding who cannot get insurance through the normal routes, but Flood Re is not available to businesses, nor to farmers. ELMS is designed to reward those farmers who deliver public good. It really is time that those farmers whose land is used to store flood-water on a continual, year-on-year basis should have some financial recompense for the loss of the use of that land. If protecting homes, villages and towns by preventing them flooding is not a public good then I am not sure what is. I urge the Minister to act to recompense these farmers.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans raised the issue of building new flood defences as well as repairing those which are in a poor state of repair. It is important that those which are already there but crumbling should be repaired, and that is a much more cost-effective option.
As has been said, the qualification for claiming under the flood recovery framework is 50 properties affected in an area. This is helpful for centres of towns and villages but pretty ineffectual in rural areas, where hamlets and households are more widely spread. Meanwhile, the farming recovery fund criteria for claiming was being within 150 metres of the river which was flooding. Again, this was a limited criterion, which left many without access to funding.
In April 2024, the previous Government announced that this scheme would be expanded to more farmers, but as we have already heard, so far nothing has happened. Although this commitment was made in April 2024, no details from either Defra or the Rural Payments Agency have been forthcoming, despite numerous requests from the NFU. Can the Minister say whether the new Government will honour this commitment and, if so, when it is likely to be rolled out? The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans also raised this. I understand that some announcement may be waiting for the Budget, but that does not fill me with confidence that we will get a positive announcement.
The AHDB reran its cropping early bird survey in March 2024. This indicated that reductions in the following crops were anticipated due to flooding: wheat, down 15% at 1.463 million hectares, which is the biggest reduction since 2020; oilseed rape, down 28% at 280,000 hectares, which is the biggest reduction since the 1980s; and winter barley, down 22% at 355,000 hectares, which is the biggest reduction since 2020. That clearly demonstrates the effects on the farming and food-producing communities of continual rainfall leading to extreme flooding.
My noble friend Lord Russell raised the issue of suicide among farmers. Farming is not an easy way of life. Surely now is the time for the Government to act to ensure that our farming communities do not disappear altogether. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Baroness Hayman of Ullock) (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans for securing this debate and welcome the opportunity to respond. This is a really important issue for farmers and rural communities, as well as for flood prevention. The Government recognise the right reverend Prelate’s commitment to these issues and to agriculture. He has made a long-standing commitment to supporting farmers, and we appreciate the work he does on that.
The noble Earl, Lord Devon, painted a pretty dramatic picture of what has happened in his locality in Devon because of flooding. I reassure him and other noble Lords that, although I do not have a magic wand and pots of cash, living in rural Cumbria I genuinely understand the devastating impact that floods can have on communities, homes and farmland.
The Government are mindful of the importance of farming to the country. British agriculture is fundamental to all of this Government’s missions. As we have heard, British farmers underpin our food and drink sector and support national food security. They create jobs and attract investment to our rural areas. They build economic resilience through nature-based solutions and play a crucial role in tackling biodiversity loss. They improve water and air quality and our resilience to climate change.
The Government also recognise the pressures that so many farmers are under. Climate issues have led to flooding in unprecedented ways, creating a real challenge for many farmers. A number of noble Lords mentioned climate change, particularly the noble Earl, Lord Russell. We are committed to maintaining food production and supporting thriving farm businesses, as well as protecting communities from flooding. As the right reverend Prelate clearly laid out, the impact of wet weather and flooding on farms is devastating and getting worse. It is becoming a real challenge for both farmers and government. Obviously, there were storms last year and this year, with a lot of wet weather—the summer was absolutely dreadful. In September, there was flooding, affecting properties right across the country.
Turning to some of the questions around this, I was asked by a number of noble Lords about the farming recovery fund and payments going forward from last winter and from spring this year. We are acutely aware of the challenges farmers have been facing because of this flooding. All farmers eligible for the initial farm recovery fund set up in April have been offered a payment. Unfortunately, further commitments around spending and the rollout of schemes is down to the spending review. I am sure that noble Lords will hear that an awful lot; I think we will all be very glad when it happens and we know where we stand on everything. I really appreciate the concerns that noble Lords have raised, including the right reverend Prelate, about the fact that this is an urgent issue, and we need to let people know what is what as soon as we can.
A number of noble Lords asked about the maintenance of existing flood defences. We are investing over £1.25 billion to build and maintain flood defences to scale up our national resilience. We will also review the programme with a view to ensure that flood risk management is fit for the challenges that we now face. Again, as part of the Government’s spending review we will look at this, but I can say that we have been spending over £200 million on maintenance, with an aim that our existing flood defences are kept in good order.
I want at this point to thank the people who work at the Environment Agency, local responders and many others, who work tirelessly to help communities when these incidents happen. We also sympathise very much with those whose homes and businesses have been damaged and who have faced so much disruption.
We also have to recognise that, as we adapt to climate change, farmers and land managers have an increasingly important role to play, and the Government very much welcome the willingness shown by farming communities to work together to better protect their local areas. I am aware of the project in Keswick—it is only up the road from me. We need to look at how we work with farmers to achieve these outcomes, because we want to support them to reduce the risk of flooding and coastal erosion through measures such as natural flood management. One way we could do this is through the ELM schemes, to provide payments to farmers to manage land and water in a way that can reduce flood risk to local communities. There are measures that benefit flood risk mitigation in all three components of ELMS: that is, the sustainable farming incentive, countryside stewardship and landscape recovery.
The floods investment programme was also mentioned. Under the current programme, the amount of funding a project can attract will depend on the damages it will avoid and the benefits that it will deliver. However, the impact of a project on agricultural land is included as part of the funding calculator and therefore is eligible for funding.
There are many actions within ELMS that farmers can apply for to protect and enhance the natural environment, and they can get payments for a range of actions to promote particularly flood management and prevention. These include support for water body buffering, soil health, farm woodland and hedgerows—all those things have been mentioned during the debate. The current Countryside Stewardship scheme offers payments, including the creation of small-scale run-off attenuation and storage, slowing flows in small watercourses, streams and on their flood plains, the creation of woodland and planting of hedges to slow flows, and the restoration of rivers and flood plains. We are expecting further flood risk benefits to arise when we roll out the updated higher-tier scheme; I hope that we will be able to provide more information on this fairly soon.
One of the two themes of the first wave of the landscape recovery pilot projects was restoring England’s streams and rivers, improving water quality, biodiversity and adapting to climate change. We hope that these will provide flood risk mitigation benefits to support farmers.
The right reverend Prelate mentioned the Minister, Daniel Zeichner, in his speech. It is a challenging time for budgets—it really is. However, I just want to assure noble Lords that the Minister is very serious about supporting farmers and looking to see the best way we can do that within the ELM scheme and other systems. I just wanted to reiterate that.
On the comments of the noble Earl, Lord Devon, on the importance of working together collaboratively, that will be incredibly important as we move forward, because the tighter the budgets, the more we can work together and the more you can actually achieve. We want to optimise the ELM scheme to produce the right outcomes for all farmers, and I thank the right reverend Prelate for his words of support for the work we are trying to do on this.
The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, mentioned reservoirs. We of course have a commitment to build new reservoirs—they are very much needed—so we will look very carefully at the suggestions that she made.
On the flood recovery framework and farming recovery fund that was mentioned, the flood recovery framework is activated only when there is large-scale and widespread flooding—the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, mentioned that.
A number of questions were asked about the future of these schemes. I am ever so sorry, but I cannot really say anything until after the spending review. The same applies to the question from the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, around the underspend, as it is all part of spending review discussions.
On the Flood Resilience Taskforce, better communications were mentioned. Part of that is improved co-ordination and communications between central government and the different agencies on the ground that have to deliver schemes. We had a meeting on 12 September and the next one is going to be in January.
The noble Earl, Lord Caithness, asked about droughts. The Flood and Droughts Research Infrastructure was announced on the 31 August 2024. This is going to be a £40 million initiative and it is the first UK-wide network focused on understanding the impact of extreme weather conditions across the country, so there is work taking place on that.
The noble Earl, Lord Devon, mentioned the need for water companies to work closely with farmers on flooding. We need to look at all options as to how we can work collaboratively, and we are doing a lot of work at the moment with water companies so it is something we need to look at.
We recognise the valuable role that farmers serve in this country. We want to do our best to back British farmers. The Minister, Daniel Zeichner, is working very hard to look at how we can make the ELMS work for farmers and for things like flood mitigation and food security. Getting all this right is a difficult balancing act, and we need to look at the best way we can achieve it. We want to do our best to support farmers in flood management and food security but also on prevention of flood. There are many schemes that can help support that, including the one in Keswick, which was mentioned.
I am very pleased that we had this debate. There have been some very interesting suggestions. I am sorry I cannot say more about funding; hopefully, at some point, we will have a much clearer picture and we can look at working together to get our best deal for farmers and flood prevention in the future.